This is just getting ridiculous. I have played about 30 games against the Ai just in the last 2 or 3 days (I'm not a fan of online play unless it's with people I know). 1) I have never won against the 'normal' ai. It -always- nukes the hell out of me. Usually about 50% through building my first anti nuke, that I started with the 2nd or third advanced unit. and even if I do get one or two of those, they have enough nukes that I can't build anti nukes fast enough to stop them. 2) The 'easy' ai is so little of a challenge that it's also not fun. I usually win before I can even get into space, even if there is 2 or 3 AI's I just want the Normal AI without the nuke frenzy. it's enough of a challenge already. I'm tired of having to spend 90% of my resources on getting anti nukes. And I really don't want to have to start looking up "The perfect build order" to play the game. I shouldn't have to have a spread sheet out to play.
Hey! Welcome to the forums! Remember, the game isn't yet finished. In my experience, the "hard" AI is actually pretty easy and I can beat him pretty solidly before nukes are put into play. Rather than dismissing an entire mechanic that you keep on losing to, I'd encourage you to learn how to play with, and beat, nukes. Here's some tips to get you started. 1: Never stop expanding. If you have a massive spread out base, then getting nuked is no problem since you have plenty of base to spare. I've won matches after getting nuked 3 and 4 times. 2: Scout your opponent OFTEN. Seriously, like, every 2 or 3 minutes. When you see him building a nukes, do one of three things. 2a: Snipe the nuke with gunships, artillery, catapults, or something. 2b: Build an anti-nuke. They are cheaper and faster to build, so it's pretty easy to build an anti-nuke before your opponent builds a nuke – provided you've scouted it. 2c: Build a nuke faster than your opponent and nuke their nuke. 3: Constantly attack and raid your opponent. If they're constantly losing outlying metal extractors and getting their base attacked, your opponent will need to invest metal into units rather than their nuke. Hopefully those tips will help you out. That being said, eventually we'll have ways to set up custom game types, like removing nukes. And finally, check out PA Matches' tutorials section. Hopefully those will help as well.
I feel your pain, and I'm looking forward to the option to disable Nukes altogether as well. In fact, despite the good advises from Brian, the AI doesn't go panic under stress as humans usually do, and whatever you do to it, it doesn't affect its eco's efficiency. Which force you in rushing into T2 and getting Anti-nukes and Nukes as well. And I agree that this is not the optimal way to play for everyone. However, I lately realized one thing. Each single Nuke is a very expensive weapon and if not used properly the net balance could ultimately not be so bad for the nuked player. In fact, in order to early build a Nuke, a player has to screw his economy, relenting the production of other units and structures. And here is where you should take over. So if you keep expanding and avoiding clustering your most important structures, so that a single Nuke can't take them out at once, you can survive quite a few impacts and keep attacking your opponent. I won several games without building a single Anti-Nuke and under a constant atomic pressure, keeping harassing my enemy until he capitulated because despite his nuclear overpower, his eco was totally screwed up.
Kind of what brian said, play on a smaller planet, and make sure to snipe early fabbers often. It is like an abortion on a proxy base when the fabber who would have created it dies. Do it with early game dox/skitters or bombers. Besides that, whatever metal they were going to build on when you sniped their fabber, build walled turrets. In a perimeter around the metal. Then take the metal yourself. Helps to wait until (in current public) you get 10-15 t1 metal and 6 idle fabbers to go t2. That way it don't build slowly and it is sufficiently funded. Get that t2, then the adv. fabber, then the t2 mexes and pgens, use the 6 fabbers that built the t2 factory. Honestly, AI might take longer to t2 in PTE (as well as you), but it gives you more time to scout and harass in t1 stage so the AI don't economy as much as you by time t2 happens. That, and t2 metal isn't unlimited, so they won't be able to nuke spam if they do go nuke.
I'm still learning to snipe fabbers early game myself but it really does slow the computer down. Sometimes the computer is a bit slow to respond correctly to threats though and doesn't always prioritize anti-air the way it should when you go solely air units. Obviously this strategy will get you burned if you do it to a human, but air superiority and lots of scouting will help control the computer a lot.
AI is totally silly with nukes. It will nuke you only if you have no antinukes. After t2 factory build 1 t2 fabber and start building antinuke, make few gunships to fend AI fabbers that love artillery creep. That's all what is difficult about AI. AI will never nuke you if it sees you have more antinukes than AI has nukes. In game against multiple AI it will use nukes on other AIs, so all you need is to have 3 antinukes in 1 launcher. Only when its out of targets it may build more nukes than you, and when AI starts nuking you its too late, because it knows already it can successfully nuke you, at this point it has for sure 2-3 more nukes that are about to get ready. Btw what you guys thing about "how to exploit AI" topic, this could help Sorian to make it more evil. And PS: I think AI in current stable build is much easier than older one. It is no challenge even when I am quite drunk, while previous one sometimes got me with my pants down few times. Granted new one is much less of annoying ****, does not creep with arti as much, playss more like humans in fair game of friends.
That makes sense, normal shoulde be normal not hard.im sure they will make normal, normal. Alltho the AI is a powerful mastermind`d superhero! kinda sounds like me but okay, ill let this one slide Unless i get beat`n by it
But how you define normal? Normal AI should be challenging for average PA player, how do you find average player? We are not average, we played for few months already (like 120 hours for me now). Imo (UBER), HARD, NORMAL, and EASY AI should be defined bit differently: - UBER its like hard but micromanages every single unit (or every pack) to kite you, stay out of range. Raids you not with single group but with 10 coordinated that go not for any structure but for theme based raids like all power, or all factories, maybe kills all fabbers, stuff we always wanted to do but it required too much micro. Between those themed raids it constantly tries to snipe/nuke your commander. No mercy to puny humans! - HARD always wants to win, its annoying bastard, and exploits everything possible, all little dirty tricks are there. But does not micro. - NORMAL, plays like your average sober friend, until you start winning then turns into HARD until it gets upper hand again. - EASY is nice and slow, plays like average drunk friend, sometimes does few dirty tricks, but then again goes back to drunk friend state. Each AI should do at least 1-2 attacks per game on evilness level of UBER AI.
120 hours? I've got 620 or so (and there are quite a few people I know with even more.. A friend has over 1200 I believe.) So true, not average
well normal ai shoulde not nuke anyone befor like 40 min or so? i dont know. but 40 min is along time for a nuke, kinda normal. im just sticking to the topick Edit: AI is puny
That after mere 120 hours AI is not threat to me just proves my point. There is no average player, average is a myth. Doing something for average is doing for nobody. When you list traits of average parson you think its or: like smart or rich or tall. But reality is that you narrowing your target, and its rather smart and rich and tall. So please do not make game for average JOE. Make evilness of AI adjustable, nobody is required to win with AI on normal, there is also easy setting. When AI beats mostly everybody on EASY without cheating then we all have big problem, beware of skynet. Edit: Millsy I would agree with you if you complained that AI is annoying persistent little #### and it ruins your fun with constant arti creep or always nuking at 15min mark etc. This cannot be helped to have more human like AI first you need to make optimal one, then you add some human like errors and behavior. ie. make AI less perfect. At lest that worked in FPS, always headshooting bots are no fun.
I think the main problem is AI difficulty being based on economic multiplier. Sure, normal AI has a normal economy... but there seems to be no limit to it's ability to multitask and can pretty much do EVERYTHING at once. It's not like playing a human who is focusing on this, then on that, and then forgetting to do the other thing. They are doing it ALL at once, and it pretty much just forces you to do the same exact thing in every game with little variability... otherwise the AI will just zerg the entire planet and build dozens of nukes simultaneously with no error to exploit. Not saying it's hard, but it's pretty limiting. I think we're just all gonna have to wait for a more comprehensive AI difficulty that limits APM.
What if the AI would adapt to the player abilities? The more you play, the more the AI learns how to deal with you. Normal would be a fair match. Where Hard would challenge you to improve your skills progressively. A sort of a learning AI. So my Normal AI would be pretty crappy compare to Godde's Normal AI. Also, Godde's AI could know some tricks (learned from Godde) that my AI does not. And if I could chose which one to play against, well, that would be awesome.
Nobody mentions joining a clan? For me it helped a whole lot, and i'm very sure im not the only one that got better after joining a clan.
As per what mot9001 said, if you need some extra help with learning to play the game with some friends: Nova is lacking on some members and would love to help!
